


Hanging on a Wall of Stars

by MachaSWicket



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: "the climb" spoilers, Angst, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Gen, Season/Series 03 Spoilers, Sort of? - Freeform, felicity is really good at what she does, sometimes too good
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-14
Updated: 2014-12-19
Packaged: 2018-03-01 12:27:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2773016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MachaSWicket/pseuds/MachaSWicket
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>SUMMARY:  <b>Spoilers for "The Climb"</b>. </p><p>Chapter 1:  Felicity wants eyes on Oliver.</p><p>Chapter 2:  <i>Felicity has always experienced life as a steady stream of thoughts, of realizations, of </i>words<i>. A non-stop barrage of words, actually, many of which tumble out before she can temper them. But the most important words, the most important realizations, she has often had trouble voicing.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> THANKS: To carogables for the insta-beta, and to youguysimserious for the encouragement. :)
> 
> DISCLAIMER: Characters/'verse belong to DC and Warner Bros. Title from Guster lyrics.

With a rapidly cooling cup of coffee in one numb hand, Felicity arrived back at the lair still feeling a strange sense of unreality, as if the last two hours hadn’t happened. As if Oliver hadn’t left her speechless with an open, honest declaration of love just before he left her to go to his possible death.

As if Oliver hadn’t _left her_.

She pushed the pain away, because that’s what she did -- she loved people, they left her, and she swallowed it down and kept moving. There was always something else to do, something else to focus on until she could breathe without cracking into pieces. This particular time, this particular abandonment? It might take a little longer than most, but Felicity couldn’t let herself think about it, couldn’t let herself process it.

Because in this particular case, there was something very important to do.

Diggle and Roy looked up when she arrived back at the lair, the stress and sadness on their faces threatening to crack her stoicism. She gave them a brittle smile and sat at her computers, refusing to look over at his suit. Refusing to think about what he’d said, what he intended to do. _Refusing_.

She startled when Diggle’s hand landed on her shoulder. “You okay?”

His question wasn’t something she could answer. She wasn’t okay, but she wasn’t... _anything_ at the moment. She was in suspended animation, even as she worked at her computers, worming her way through multiple layers of encryption by rote. “I need the coordinates,” she said.

Felicity didn’t need to look up to perfectly picture the looks Diggle and Roy exchanged in the silence that followed.

“I know he told you,” she added, her voice clipped and impatient. “I need the coordinates.”

“Felicity--”

“I’m not running after him if that’s what you’re worried about,” she interrupted, her tone a little too vicious for the circumstances. It probably wasn’t nice to vent her anger on Diggle, but she needed him at arms’ length. She needed him at a safe distance. She had too many cracks already, and if he kept reaching out for her, her defenses would crumble and leave her with nothing.

Diggle pulled his hand away from her rigid shoulder with a sigh. “What are you planning to do with the coordinates?” he asked.

She swallowed a dozen sarcastic remarks, simply gesturing at the screen where several U.S. administrative agency logos glowed back at them. “I’m going to get eyes on him.” She didn’t know where he’d gone, where he’d agreed to meet Ra’s al Ghul, and that detail mattered -- she could hack weather satellites or spy satellites or telecommunication satellites, but she needed to know the geolocation to get started.

“Canadian Rockies,” Roy said, stepping up beside her. “Dig?”

Felicity heard a crinkle just before Diggle laid a scrap of notebook paper on her desk. Her breath caught when she saw Oliver’s familiar scrawl, but she pushed through it, typing the GPS coordinates in. “Willmore Wilderness Park,” she murmured, scanning the topographical map. Isolated, of course.

“How is he even going to get there in time?” Roy mused. 

“It’s in Alberta, not Antarctica,” Felicity shot back. Though she did wonder whether the League had provided transportation. Because probably there weren’t many direct flights from Starling to Edmonton, and that must be quite a drive into the mountains, and--

“He has to climb to the plateau,” Diggle said, his words weighted down with dread.

Felicity turned in her chair, eyes wide. “What?”

Clearly the last thing Diggle wanted to have to do was explain this to her, but he held her gaze and dipped his chin once. “It’s part of the trial by combat.”

She blinked, shaking her head in denial, because that wasn’t fair. None of this was _fair_. “Is Ra’s al Ghul scaling a mountain on his way to the duel, too?” she asked, but she already knew the answer. Diggle merely shrugged, a bleak expression on his face.

Felicity felt herself teetering on the edge. She believed in Oliver, believed he could match Ra’s al Ghul in intensity and desire to win. But she also knew the deck was stacked against him -- and she feared more than ever that Oliver’s humanity would be used against him.

Ironically, the humanity that he didn’t fully believe he had. 

She blinked back tears, stiffening in her chair as she turned back to the monitors. Enough. Enough of that. She couldn’t afford to fall apart, and there was no _reason_ to fall apart. And she ruthlessly refused to qualify that sentiment with a _yet_.

It took quite a bit of time and effort to locate and hack into governmental satellite feeds. Her fallback options were weather satellites or, in dire circumstances, private telecommunications satellites. Luckily, her options overflying Canada were _mostly_ launched by English-speaking countries, which meant she could find what she needed with relative ease.

Still, the hours passed more quickly than she would’ve guessed, Diggle and Roy moving around her though she barely noticed. They kept her mug of coffee full and at least lukewarm and left snacks that she wouldn’t touch. Her eyes were bleary by the time she found the two best options for the remote mountaintop. It wasn’t yet dawn there, so there were no images to compare or fine tune. There was nothing else to do but wait.

Felicity pushed herself up out of the chair, belatedly noticing the dig of her bra in its 20th hour of service, the pinch of her shoes. As she stretched, she looked around the foundry and saw Roy asleep in a ball on the couch, and Diggle working out with the training dummy. Even to Felicity’s untrained eye, his form looked off, his blows a little wild and uncoordinated, and she knew he was as close to losing his composure as she was. 

She waited until he paused, then stepped onto the mats. Close, but not crowding him. “You okay?”

He turned, the anxiety and dread clear on his face. “Not really. You?”

A tear slipped down her cheek, sneaking right through her defenses. “Not really,” she admitted, letting her fear and anxiety and regret show for a brief, brutal moment. Diggle closed his eyes against whatever he saw in her face, and she pulled herself back together as best she could. Straightening, she blew out an unsteady breath. “I need coffee. _Real_ coffee.”

Diggle nodded, moving to the couch to shake Roy awake. 

“What? No,” Roy said, shooting upright, his hands out in a defensive position. He blinked at Diggle, then Felicity, and she could _see_ the moment he remembered. Roy’s shoulders stiffened, and he sounded like a scared kid when he asked, “What happened?”

“Nothing,” Felicity answered quickly, and she hated herself for letting a “yet” slip out. 

“Coffee run?” Diggle asked, lifting his eyebrows in request.

Roy ran a hand over his face, then nodded. “Sure. I’ll just--” He stood, still a little unsteady. “I’ll be right back.”

Felicity glanced back at her monitors, her breath hissing when she saw a faint grey instead of the solid, impenetrable darkness of minutes before. “John,” she whispered, drawn towards them even as everything in her wanted to run away, wanted to hide from what was coming.

Unsurprisingly, the U.S. spy satellite was higher definition than the Canadian weather satellite. It was also riskier to commandeer, but Felicity wasn’t really in the mindset to worry about federal charges, so she did her best to readjust the camera, to zoom in as much as possible.

But it was still a satellite image from a high angle. She and Diggle were able to make out figures -- dark, moving shapes against the bright white snow and rocky grey outcroppings -- but it was hard to tell much. They were standing in a loose semi-circle as the sky brightened and the image grew clearer.

Felicity gasped, “There.” She pointed to the dark shape climbing over the edge. It _had_ to be Oliver. She held her breath, watching Oliver right himself. 

The shapes on the screen converged, a smaller, tighter ring around Oliver and what Felicity assumed was Ra’s al Ghul. Her stomach churned as she realized how difficult it would be to keep everyone straight -- she didn’t have a program handy that she could layer onto the feed to tag images, so she leaned closer, keeping her gaze fixed on Oliver.

The circle of shapes moved again, and Oliver and another person stood to the side for a long moment, before Oliver shifted strangely, and then-- “Did he take off his shirt?” Felicity felt a bubble of hysterical laughter threatening, because _of course_ he took off his shirt.

“That must be R’as,” Diggle said, his voice tight. He leaned closer and tapped one finger against another pale figure. 

“So they’re fighting on a mountaintop in the Canadian Rockies, shirtless?” Felicity asked numbly. But any small spark of amusement at the absurdity fled, because they were _fighting on a mountaintop_ , and only one of them would survive, and she wasn’t sure she could watch this. 

But she couldn’t look away.

Onscreen, the rest of the dark shapes pulled back further, leaving the combatants in a makeshift ring. Felicity pressed a hand to her breastbone, willing her heart to stop racing, her breaths to even out. She felt lightheaded, a useless spectator hundreds of miles away, unable to do a single thing to affect the outcome.

“John,” she whispered, and he was there, one of her small hands engulfed in his large hand. She tightened her grip, gasping when Oliver and Ra’s al Ghul sprang into motion on the screen.

Once the fighting began, Felicity quickly lost track of who was who. They were moving too quickly, circling each other and clashing and she assumed there must be swords, but the satellite imagery wasn’t granular enough to know for sure. From such a high angle, she couldn’t read Oliver’s body the way she normally was able to, couldn’t recognize his natural grace. She clung to Diggle’s hand, not moving, not even breathing, every single bit of energy on that screen willing Oliver to fight, to win, to _stay alive_.

The fight seemed to go one forever, until suddenly, it stopped.

The two figures were near the edge Oliver had climbed onto, and she knew, _knew_ it was a significant drop down, even if the image from the satellite didn’t provide any depth perception. The men were unmoving, and Felicity leaned even closer to the screen, needing to know, needing Oliver to be okay. 

She didn’t realize she was crying, couldn’t hear her own pleas as she strained for a clear picture. Who was who? Why were they so still?

“What’s happening?”

The picture brightened just for a moment, a stray beam of sunshine illuminating the figures, and Felicity knew. “No,” she whispered, her gaze locked on the man closer to the edge, the man with lighter brown hair shining dully in in the early dawn sun. 

_Oliver_.

Almost as soon as she’d recognized Oliver, Ra’s moved abruptly forward, and then Oliver was falling--

Felicity lurched to her feet, silent, as everything fell apart.

END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once I had the idea of Felicity tasking a satellite and seeing this... I couldn't not write it. :( I may write some followups in this really goddamn angsty 'verse, and if I do, I'll add them as chapters to this. And now I am going to go write FLUFFY SMUTTY GOODNESS.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Felicity has always experienced life as a steady stream of thoughts, of realizations, of *words*. A non-stop barrage of words, actually, many of which tumble out before she can temper them. But the most important words, the most important realizations, she has often had trouble voicing._

Felicity has always experienced life as a steady stream of thoughts, of realizations, of _words_. A non-stop barrage of words, actually, many of which tumble out before she can temper them. But the most important words, the most important realizations, she has often had trouble voicing.

Has _always_ had trouble voicing when it mattered.

And in the weeks that have passed since Oliver’s death, in the days that she’s pushed herself to get out of bed and keep moving forward, the rollicking stream of words in her head has been rushing toward one single waterfall: what she needs to say to Oliver, and will never be able to.

She’s thought of a thousand things to say to him, but they’re actually all the same -- _I love you_.

The most important truth she knows will never be shared with him, and she still can’t fathom it. She knows he’s dead; she watched him die live via satellite, like it was pay-per-view boxing match instead of the brutal death of the man she loved -- _loves_. She knows; she read the missive sent by Nyssa praising Oliver’s bravery in death. She read it twice before she burnt the thick cream stationary in her trashcan. 

She _knows_ he’s dead, but she still can’t _believe_ it.

Even though he hasn’t come back. Even though he hasn’t contacted her. Even though every single day that passes without word from him is more proof that Nyssa was right, that her own eyes didn’t deceive her. That Oliver died alone on a mountaintop in the Canadian Rockies.

A world without Oliver Queen in it is unthinkable, so Felicity has thrown herself into work to avoid grappling with the idea. To avoid acknowledging her shattered heart -- there’s nothing that will stitch the pieces back together again, so she just keeps moving while pushing the rest of it down. 

Work helps some. When she’s lost in a problem, when she’s double-checking Ray’s calculations for his suit, when she’s coding security measures for hours at a time -- it’s the only peace she can find. It’s the only time she can breathe a little easier.

When she’s lost herself in work, she can go whole minutes at a time without seeing Oliver’s face. Without hearing his profession of love. Without remembering the sickening lurch of his body being kicked off a rocky ledge.

It’s never for very long, and she always feels guilty afterwards. But no matter how long she can hold the memories at bay, nothing masks the hollow ache in her chest, and nothing helps with her sense of... _waiting_. She feels like she’s in suspended animation, like she’s Han Solo in carbonite -- just put her on a shelf and leave her there until Oliver’s back.

Because she _still_ can’t make herself believe that he’s really, truly dead. She is firmly entrenched in denial, and she knows it. But it’s the only way she can keep going.

Diggle tells her it’s not healthy, that she needs to come to terms with her loss. As if there were a way to make this livable. As if there were a way to make any of this _okay_.

The only solution for her problem is Oliver Queen, alive and back in her life.

She’s fantasized about him coming back, has told herself complicated, semi-believable stories about him recovering in some remote Canadian hospital listed as John Doe. In fact, she has hacked her fair share of hospital records, has combed the police incident reports for any references to anything that could possibly be traced back to Oliver.

She’s found nothing.

Still, she imagines it a thousand ways -- an unknown number on her phone with _his_ voice on the other end; a knock on her apartment door in the middle of the night; Diggle taking her hand and leading down into the lair to find _him_ waiting there for her; Roy shouting her name in excitement as she turns from her monitors to see _him_ descending the stairs, maybe unsteadily.

Never, ever has she imagined him appearing in her office at Palmer Technologies, just after 6:30 on a Wednesday evening, half-hidden by shadows.

He’d never set foot in the building once Ray took over, never visited her new (his old) office, never expressed much interest in her job beyond a single congratulation offered through gritted teeth.

There’s no logical reason she can come up with for why he would be standing, frozen, in the glass doorway of her office, watching her with those intense blue eyes. Alive.

Felicity freezes in turn, the notes she’s been making on the suboptimal electronic circuitry in Ray’s plans forgotten. She stares at what looks like Oliver -- at what has to be a hallucination brought on by too little sleep, by too many fantasies of what this moment would be like. It feels as unreal as everything has since he left to face Ra’s al Ghul.

Even in the dim light, she can see his familiar shape, maybe a little thinner. His hair is longer and almost shaggy, and the jeans he’s wearing are a bit large on him. He’s got a worn leather jacket on over a henley, and when he shifts his weight, she recognizes the way he moves when he’s hurt.

“Felicity?” he says, and it’s his voice, the voice she’s missed for seven weeks, the only voice she’s wanted to hear say her name.

But she can’t move, can’t answer. None of the thousands of words she’s wanted to say to him make it past her lips. The non-stop stream of sentence fragments rushing around in her head just... stops. And she stares, silent.

“Felicity?” Oliver repeats, talking one halting stop closer. He’s definitely still healing from injuries -- his gait is just uneven enough to catch her attention, though he is graceful as ever.

But she saw him tumble off of a cliff -- how could he be standing before her with just a slight limp?

She’s not convinced this is real. She’s not convinced it’s a hallucination either. She’s... _not convinced_ , balanced on a knife edge, and she doesn’t know which way she’s going to fall.

And then she sees Diggle behind him, moving closer so he’s standing just beside Oliver. “Felicity, Oliver’s alive,” Diggle says, his voice low and calm. And it’s obvious -- it _should_ be obvious. Diggle, her emotional support and the (living) man she trusts above all others, is standing there beside Oliver, the man she had trusted above all others before she watched him die. _Oliver_. Diggle adds, somewhat unnecessarily, “He survived.”

It's what she's believed in silence for weeks and weeks. It's what she's desperately wanted to be true. And now that Diggle is telling her he's alive -- now that _Oliver_ is standing before her -- she's having trouble really and truly believing it.

Felicity is standing behind her desk -- suddenly, awkwardly, hesitantly -- and she doesn’t know how or why. Something light and hopeful flutters in her chest.

“Felicity.” Her name is a whisper this time, and then she’s moving and Oliver’s moving and they crash into each other in the middle of her office.

He is solid under her hands, against her chest, and she feels something beneath her rib cage give way. Oliver’s palms are pressed to her spine, his body bowed towards hers, his face pressed into her hair, and she realizes, suddenly, that all of her bottled up words are cascading out in a torrent, spilling into the soft fabric of his t-shirt.

Her ear is pressed to his chest, and all she hears is the thump of his heartbeat. Her hands clutch at the back of his shirt, and she can feel the rumble of his voice. She understands he’s murmuring apologies into her hair just from the tone, but she can’t really hear his words. She can’t even hear her own, but she knows she’s still talking.

It’s all the things she needs to tell him, a non-stop rush of words in eddies and currents and little white-capped waves of truth. 

She’s crying, and he’s shaking in her arms like maybe he’s crying, too, and she still can’t hear anything over the steady drumbeat of his heart. 

Her arms are tight around his ribcage. She doesn’t know exactly how it happened, but they’ve sunk to the cool tile floor, clinging to each other in the sudden, unexpected calm.

Slowly, carefully, Felicity leans back, just enough to meet his gaze. “I love you,” she says.

It’s the only important thing.

And he smiles.

END


End file.
